The panel headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will meet again on May 18-19 in Srinagar to finalise the rates of different commodities and services as also to approve the remaining ones

GST Council to meet next on May 18 and 19 in Srinagar, FM Arun Jaitley saidPhoto:PTI

With all decks virtually cleared for the imminent rollout of the much anticipated Goods and Services Tax (GST) from July 1, the Centre and states today sat together to finalise rules and regulations of the new indirect tax regime. At the meeting held today, the GST Council approved half of the rules needed for rollout of the GST regime.

The panel headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will meet again on May 18-19 in Srinagar to finalise the rates of different commodities and services as also to approve the remaining ones.

Jaitley said the Council gave approval to amending the five rules on registration of entities under the GST regime, filing of returns, payment of tax and refund, invoicing and debit and credit notes in consonance with the GST law approved by Parliament this week. The GST Council has already approved five sets of rules relating to registration, payments, refund, invoice and returns.

These rules were cleared in the meeting of the Council in September and today they were made in consonance with the Parliament approved law.

Tentative approval was given to the remaining four rules of input tax credit, valuation, transition provisions and composition rules and the final approval will come in the next meeting to be held in Srinagar, Jaitley said.

The meeting came two days after the Lok Sabha cleared four supplementary GST legislations -- Central GST (CGST), Integrated GST (IGST), Union Territory GST (UTGST) and the Compensation law – on Wednesday.

These laws would have supporting rules which would be notified by the Centre and states before the Goods and Services Tax is implemented.

However, these rules would still require some minor tweaking as the legislations were approved by the Council earlier this month and the five set of rules were framed before that.

The GST will subsume excise, service tax and other local levies. Existing service tax, excise and VAT assessees would have to migrate to the new tax regime by registering on the GSTN portal.\

Meanwhile, the GST Bill will be taken up in Rajya Sabha on April 5 for discussion and passage.